Motor vehicles, such as passenger cars, trucks, busses, fleet vehicles, etc. are widely used, and knowing the locations of such vehicles is often desired. For example, should a vehicle be stolen it would be beneficial to know the vehicle's location so that authorities could be promptly and accurately directed to retrieve the vehicle. Indeed, the tracking system could plot the getaway path of the thief.
For a company with hired drivers, it may be desirable to know the driver's whereabouts during the course of the day. Similarly, a rental car agency or other fleet operator, for example, may wish to know the whereabouts of its fleet of vehicles.
It may also be desirable to track the location of a vehicle as it is used throughout the course of a normal day. For parents of younger or older drivers, for example, knowledge of the vehicle's location may provide some assurance that the driver is at designated locations and following a prescribed route.
The widespread availability and use of the Internet has prompted a number of vehicle tracking systems to also make use of the Internet. For example, TelEvoke, Inc. proposed such a system in combination with Clifford Electronics. The system was to provide notification, control and tracking services via the telephone or the Internet. Users could be notified via phone, e-mail, or a pager of events such as a car alarm being triggered. Users could control the vehicle remote devices via the phone, the web, or a PDA, such as unlocking car doors. Additionally, users could track TelEvoke-enabled vehicles on the Internet or via the telephone. An Internet map could be viewed by the user showing the actual and prior vehicle locations. TelEvoke offered its services via a centralized fully automated Network Operations Center. To reduce the communications costs, it was proposed to use the control channel of the cellular telephone network.
A number of significance advances in vehicle tracking technology are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,015,830 to Flick, and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. This patent discloses a vehicle tracking unit for a vehicle of a type including a vehicle data bus extending throughout the vehicle and at least one operable vehicle device connected thereto. The at least one operable vehicle device may be responsive to at least one data bus code on the vehicle data bus. The vehicle tracking unit may include a vehicle position determining device, a wireless communications device, and a controller cooperating with the vehicle position determining device and the wireless communications device to send vehicle position information to a user. Moreover, the controller may generate the at least one data bus code on the vehicle data bus to control the at least one operable vehicle device based upon a command signal received by the wireless communications device.
Another significant advance in vehicle tracking relates to speed exceeded notifications and is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,888,495 to Flick and assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The patent discloses a tracking system controller being switchable to be in an armed mode for cooperating with a vehicle position determining device and a wireless communications device to generate, and send a speeding alert message based upon the vehicle exceeding a speed threshold for longer than a predetermined time indicative of aggressive driving of the vehicle. A monitoring station may generate a series of speeding alert message notifications for a user based upon receiving the speeding alert message from the vehicle tracking unit. The monitoring station may cancel any remaining speeding alert message notifications of the series based upon a cancellation command response from an entity already having received the speeding alert message notification. Accordingly, if the user may be reached at different telephone numbers or different users are desirably notified of the alert, then unnecessary notifications are avoided. Of course, other approaches for using a vehicle tracker to influence/monitor a vehicle regarding excessive speed may also be desirable.